Milch is a wordless but nowhere near silent dramatic piece from long-time Klasky Csupo director/animator Igor Kovalyov. Kovalyov was born in the Ukraine in 1954, and although he first came to Hollywood to work for Arlene and Gabor’s little animation shingle-that-could in 1991, in the intervening time he’s made animated product on both continents. Milch could be Kovalyov mining his childhood, or it could very well be about Russia or Ukraine or Bulgaria as it lives and breathes today.

The centerpiece of Milch isn’t so much the milk as the girl who delivers it. She’s pretty, and the boy of the house is falling for her big time. Trouble is, Dad already has. In fact they’ve probably had an affair. Mom knows, and she’s bitter as hell, which doesn’t make life any easier. Daily household living is the subject of the short, and every family dynamic is exposed, from the boy’s alternating admiration and rage at his father to Grandma’s top-of-the-pyramid role as caregiver to grandson, son and invalid husband.

The narrative unfolds in a city where Russian words are shouted in the street and spelled out on storefronts, but the Cyrillic alphabet is missing; where Stalinist graphics could be archaeological holdovers or tongue-in-cheek advertising appropriations on the side of a bus; where there’s pop music coming from a dozen car stereos but Mom sits at home listening to opera on what looks like a Vietnam-era radar scanner.

So much happens in so little time that it’s difficult to recount the day’s events, but Dad goes off to work and the boy stays home in the darkened flat. Each of them has a confrontation with the girl, and each meeting is folded into a strange moment of fantasy so we don’t know if it’s a vision of narrative or just a wish fulfillment. There are recriminations, toasts, a picked scab, a spool of thread, a random beating in the street and cold cream for Grandmother that glows in the dark.

In contrast with his other shorts, which have featured chicken-human hybrids and worms with human faces who act like puppies, this is the most reality-based of Kovalyov’s works. Like his other shorts — Hen His Wife and Bird in the Window — dialogue has been jettisoned in favor of a cavalcade of tiny gestures and postures that seem to pack the whole history of a relationship into the empty spaces between actions. Everything goes very fast: the most important moments seized, embraced and abandoned as in a Dogme film.

What’s extraordinary about Kovalyov’s animation, and what separates him from geographical neighbors like Priit PÃ¤rn, is the depth, the subtlety of the physical motion. A simple scene of Grandma pushing Granddad in a chair across a floor to reach a glass of water, which he tips over, takes on a reality that’s at the same time pathetic, electrifying and undeniable. Plus, and I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen this in animation, Kovalyov’s characters breathe.

Milch is certainly an early contender for an Oscar nomination, and if we’re quite lucky, will appear on a DVD of the animator’s complete works in the near future. I hope so, because then we can all see Andrei Svislotsky again. I saw it once on Bravo 10 years ago, and it lingers in the memory like literature.